Digital Technologies For Improving Oral Implant Outcome

Digital technologies are pervading all aspects of modern dentistry, including implant dentistry, and are causing a noticeable change in treatment options and outcomes. Technologies include, among others, imaging modalities used for diagnosis and treatment planning, virtual planning and computer-aided design, and various online tools. The field is quickly evolving, and research is sometimes lagging behind clinical applications. More evidence regarding these technologies may broaden their applicability and improve their predictability, allowing for more targeted, patient-specific treatments, potentially reducing the invasiveness of procedures, as well as preventing unnecessary interventions. This dissertation focuses on the use of digital technologies in the field of implant dentistry, specifically: blooming artifacts around oral implants in CBCT imaging, the accuracy of intraoral scanners when assessing the position of oral implants, the use of patient-specific surgical guides to increase the accuracy of bone augmentation procedures using particulate graft material, and finally the development of a predictive model and online tool for peri-implantitis risk assessment.